Netscape hangs when not connected to ISP?

["Eric G. Stern" <egstern@enteract.com>]

Hi,

Recently, whenever I start netscape when I'm not connected to an ISP, it
hangs in startup even if I'm using it to look at a local file.  I used
to be able to say:

netscape xyzzy.html

and view the local file xyzzy.html even when I'm not connected. It used
to be that when I started netscape while I wasn't connected it would
just pop up an error saying it couldn't reach a DNS for host lookup (to
get to my home page.)  Is there an option that I'm missing somewhere?

I have kernel 2.0.35, Debian 2.0, Netscape 4.0.7.

				Thanks,
				Eric Stern